


Five Combinations And One Lock

by Leyenn



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's doing it. Doesn't mean everyone should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Combinations And One Lock

**   
_tumble_   
**

They really, really shouldn't be doing it here. This. It's bad, very very bad. Very bad.

"Oh," she says, then "oh," in time with his fingers moving on her thigh. "This. Bad. Very bad..."

"Fucking terrible," he breathes into her mouth, and his kiss is a snarling flash of hunger and passion. She feels stupid not to have expected passion from him when he's the most passionate of them all - the most passionate man she's ever met, in fact. Before him, she confused passion with love. She knows better now.

She doesn't love Owen, but god, she can't help the passion she feels around him. It's bad, very bad, but she doesn't care. She doesn't have the strength for it - her life is changed, new, and she needs something to hang on to and he's here and that's enough.

  


*

  


** _turn_ **

Mary was her first woman. (If you can call her that. Tosh isn't sure.) Not that she's had a lot of men in her life, either, though. (Not that she's had more than one.) So aside from what her parents would say, it's not quite as much of a shock to her system as it could have been.

She wonders if she might really be a lesbian. She used to hear rumours about herself, in London, at the think tank, then at UNIT, and now she wonders if they had it right. Maybe she's got it all wrong. Maybe she's tried so hard to understand everything else that she's missed out on understanding herself.

Logically, if she's a lesbian, then what she feels for Owen isn't love or longing or need, but something else. She doesn't know what. But it's a comfort to think about what it's not. It's a comfort to focus on something else, and then to find it so close.

She wonders if kissing Gwen is really what she wants, and if Gwen kissing her back is really as good as it feels, and if Owen shivers too when Gwen's fingers touch like this.

  


*

  


** _break_ **

There isn't a day, a minute, a moment that goes by he doesn't think of Lisa. There isn't a day, a minute, a waking instant that doesn't hurt.

He feels black and sick and dirty. Her skin is hot and sticky against his when he thrusts into her: her eyes are closed and her head is turned away as she cradles him close, like a protection against the sharpness of sensation. He's pretending he's not here, pretending he's not still thinking of Lisa even now.

He cleans up after them. That's what he does. He sees how she's not one of them, not quite, sees how she tries and wants to ask her why, why would you want that, to be a part of them after what he did? Why would you stay?

He hates that he can't ask it. He's afraid of the answer, of understanding it. He hates himself, and he pities Tosh for giving what he's not strong enough to turn away.

  


*

  


** _open_ **

He thinks sometimes it's a bad idea to flirt with the team. Then he thinks, what the hell, it could be worse. They could be people he doesn't want to flirt with. Not that he remembers the last time he met one of those.

They take it as it's meant, for the most part, and it helps him survive the days, having people to connect to again. They don't know him, of course, but it's better that way. There are truths about him they know but don't believe, and he's happy to keep it that way. Some of the things he's done have made even Owen shudder.

His own romantic exploits are legendary; Ianto's are a silent hole in the middle of the room.

The first time he decides to do it, the first time his fingers ignore the coffee to steal across pressed fabric instead, he feels the shudder of muscle underneath his touch. He knows Ianto's searching, and hurting, too, and there's nothing he can do about either but this.

"I'm sorry," he says, and hopes this feeling is really sincerity, for Ianto and for him. "Really. I'm sorry."

  


*

  


** _twist_ **

Kissing Jack isn't like kissing Owen. Making love with Jack isn't like having sex with Owen, or like making love with Rhys. Nothing about Jack is the same, and she gets the feeling when he looks into her eyes that nothing ever will be again.

When his mouth closes over hers she can taste wisps of gold sunlight in his kiss, feel it cool and bright against her eyelids. He holds her gently and it melts her in ways Owen's hunger never does. The world is her and him and nothing else, seduction so practised she doesn't recognise it at first even from him.

His naked skin is smooth, his body toned, his laugh rich and soft in her ear as he slips fingers inside her - fingers, all at once, and she shouldn't feel ready but she is, god, she is, and she wants him, the golden boy, the shining knight.

"Everyone does," he says when she tells him that, and grins with an empty light in his eyes.

  


*

  


** _fit_ **

His fingers are tingling. It's an odd sensation. He moves, then scratches his hand, but it doesn't stop. His palm feels hot, and his fingers twitch without his written consent. It's very disconcerting given that he's trying to concentrate on flying.

He turns his wrist experimentally, watching for signs of temporal displacement or possible alien infection. The last world he stopped at had a particularly nasty strain of Ebrithetiian Golden Fever running amok in its ecosystem, and entertaining though it might be, he's not that interested in becoming a lonely statue out here, even one transmuted into solid gold.

The nanogenes, eventually, are what reassure him - no solid gold fingertips for him today - and eventually what remind him. Regeneration is a strange art, after all, and there's no telling what might happen...

He smiles, pats the TARDIS with a tingling hand, and he's whistling as he sets a course for twenty-first century Earth.

  


*

  



End file.
